applied in the earliest times to the Euxine or Black Sea. By the beginning, however, of the seventh century before the Christian era these seas and maritime channels had been explored, and several colonies[1] had been planted by the adventurous Greeks who issued from the Ionian seaport of Miletus. Later than the Milesians, a band of Dorians from Megara penetrated into these parts and, by a strange choice, as it was afterwards considered, selected a point at the mouth of the Bosphorus on the Asiatic shore for a settlement, which they called Chalcedon.[2] Seventeen years later[3] a second party from Megara fixed themselves on the European headland, previously known as Lygos,[4] nearly opposite their first colony. The leader of this expedition was Byzas,[5] and from him the town they built was named Byzantium.[6] The actual. Ausonius compares Lygos to the Byrsa of Carthage (De Clar. Urb., 2).]
- ↑ Of these Sinope claimed to be the eldest, and honoured the Argonauts as its founders (Strabo, xii, 3).
- ↑ Ibid., vii, 6.
- ↑ Herodotus, iv, 144.
- ↑ Pliny, Hist. Nat., iv, 18[11
- ↑ Not a Greek name; most likely that of a local chief.
- ↑ According to the Chronicon of Eusebius, Chalcedon was founded in Olymp. 26, 4, and Byzantium in Olymp. 30, 2, or 673, 659 B.C. In modern works of reference the dates 684, 667 seem to be most generally accepted. I pass over the legends associated with this foundation—the divine birth of Byzas; the oracle telling the emigrants to build opposite the city of the blind; another, which led the Argives (who were also concerned in the early history of Byzantium) to choose the confluence of the Cydarus and Barbyses, at the extremity of the Golden Horn, whence they were directed to the right spot by birds, who flew away with parts of their sacrifice—inventions or hearsay of later times, when the real circumstances were forgotten (see Strabo, vii, 6; Hesychius Miles, De Orig. CP., and others, all authors of comparatively late date. Herodotus (iv, 144), the nearest to the events (c. 450 B.C.), makes the plain statement that the Persian general Megabyzus said the Chalcedonians must have been blind when they overlooked the site of Byzantium.
